The Red Bulletin June 2019

MTB street
sound violent, but this is like scrap metal crashing
down a mineshaft. They rush to his aid, but he’s OK –
kind of. “He slipped a foot and broke his saddle with
his balls,” says Brettle, incredulously. It’s no joke – the
saddle’s metal rails are both neatly sheared in half.
It’s suddenly obvious why the riders favour a
distinctly old-school set-up of overbuilt aluminium
frames, 26in (66cm) wheels and downhill tyres,
running at 40psi, rather than trail pressures of 25psi,
with extra spacers in their suspension. “The bikes
take a beating,” says Matthews. “You need something
that’s super-burly to take the impacts, because it isn’t
like riding dirt – you’re landing on solid concrete.”
Brettle is getting a new frame custom-built for
his style – by Frome-based bespoke bike-makers
BTR Fabrications – because the modern trend for
low, slack and long wheelbase bikes is unsuited to
the short, brutal landings of the street. “I ride an
aluminium bike, 26in wheels, old-school – just has
to be hardcore.” Even within the world of mountain
biking, these guys are iconoclasts. As it turns out,
they all have very practical day jobs, from carpenter
to carbon-fibre engineer, so they’re familiar with
breaking points. They know what it is to push metal,
bone, carbon fibre and sinew to the limit – and past it.
“That’s the end of my day,” grimaces Matthews,
who walks like John Wayne for the next few hours.
If they’re shaken by his crash, the other riders don’t
show it. They’re focused on the finale: another ramp
jump, this time off a 3m wall, over a pavement and
onto a banking in the car park below. The run-up is
along tarmac to a gravel path and then grass. The
ramp makes it possible, but the run-in is “sub-optimal
enough” for Henry Durman to have a high-speed
wash-out on the lumpy grass, just before the ramp.
Picking himself up, the 23-year-old marine engineer
and rigger shouts down from the top of the wall,
“Aah! I’m shaking like a sick dog!”
It’s another high-consequence jump with a tiny
landing zone. Get it wrong and you could land flat on
unyielding tarmac and detonate your knees, or go nose
in and be ejected straight off the bike into something
pitilessly solid. You can’t see the landing from the
top, so the riders are having to line themselves up
by looking at a distant lamppost as they jump.
As Reynolds launches off the ramp, he doesn’t
seem phased – he whips his hands off the bar to
throw his arms behind him and land a ‘suicide nohander’.
The landing is the hardest of the day: every
millimetre of his downhill bike’s 180mm suspension
is called upon as his arms and legs fight to absorb
the rest of the impact. After a flurry of fist bumps,
he dismounts and demonstrates his commitment
by taking off his shoe to adjust the brace he’s
wearing, following recent surgery on both ankles.
Despite his scare, Durman sends the next jump,
landing with a whoop. He also races downhill, but
for him the buzz you get from a street jump can’t be
beaten off-road. “With street, you’ve only got one
chance to get it right, which is so exhilarating. There’s
so much adrenalin coursing through your system,
you’re up there just shaking, waiting to drop in.”
What makes MTB street so liberating for these
riders is the very fact that it hasn’t been built for them.
“With street [riding],
you’ve only got one
chance to get it right“
Durman scopes out steps as he sets up near Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court
Downhill and enduro tracks have big jumps, but they
are designed to be predictable and safe. “The distance
between where you take off and land is a nice smooth
arc,” says Reynolds. “But with street, if you’re jumping
off a wall, you go up but there’s still 10-15ft [3-5m]
to drop – the arc is lopsided.” The consequences of
getting it wrong are greater, but so too are the rewards.
It’s this process of overcoming obstacles from
dramatic new angles that seems to define how MTB
street riders interact with their environment. Urban
worlds can seem compressed, buckling under external
strains and internal angst. Normally, in a world under
siege from itself, options narrow, possibilities are
blocked, and self-expression is stifled. For minds
under pressure, streets are recast as prisons. But for
the street rider, stairs become launch pads, walls
become roads, and obstacles become old friends.
Perhaps being able to see your street from a radically
new perspective does a hard reset on your relationship
to it. Who knows, it could even set you free.
THE RED BULLETIN 63